At the lodge

Lake Guntersville State Park

Story by Seth Terrell Photos by Crystal Terrell and David Moore

Flying home in October from California after a family trip through Yosemite, King’s Canyon and Sequoia National Parks, I was still a little starryeyed. I had gotten so used to waking up each morning in air thick with the rich scent of evergreen trees – firs, redwoods, and sequoias. I was, and am, so enchanted by the sheer splendor of those national parks that a month later, before I fall asleep at night, I often replay the trip in my mind, visions of gleaming granite peaks and breathtaking valleys dancing in my head – El Capitan and Half Dome.

To say I was utterly enraptured barely scratches the surface.

When we touched down in Birmingham, I turned to my girls as we were exiting the plane. Though our time in California was done, there was still another park on our agenda.

“I’ve got some good news,” I said. “Our adventures are not done …” include an original acreage transferred by TVA in 1947. When editor David Moore called me with the idea of staying in the lodge for a few days, he mentioned that it was time to write the story on the park.

My and David’s travels for the magazine have taken us in and out and all over the park’s footprint. Some of my personal favorite journeys include mountain biking with the Mountain Lake Cycling crew and horseback riding with Alabama Horseback Adventures. And I can’t forget the first time, as a kid, I watched a majestic bald eagle torpedo from the clouds and snatch a flopping fish from Lake Guntersville.

Find a deep connection in your ‘backyard’

The deck at Lake Guntersville State Park offers one of, if not the very best views in Alabama. The Terrells – fifth grade teacher Crystal, daughters Selah, 7, and Rilah, 9, and writer and Wallace State English instructor Seth – traveled only from Albertville to get there. It’s basically their backyard. The view from their room was also grand.

All our experiences and stories have only contributed to the mystique of the park, making it feel like a second home in many ways.

Along the way, Michael Jeffreys, the district superintendent for the northeast region of Alabama’s state parks, has been our faithful consultant and friend.

Mike has been involved within the park system since he was 25. His career fell into a generational gap that allowed him to work within four parks and return to the area in his superintendent role. He now lives nearby, with Guntersville as his home base.

“My desire to work here is because of my love for the outdoors,” he says. “That love has always been close to me, and it carries on in my relationship with the park. I still remember coming down Short Creek Mountain, when I first took a job here, thinking, ‘If there’s a heaven on earth, I’ve found it.’”

Around the time he took the role, the park was in the recovery process after being hit by two simultaneous tornadoes in 2011, an experience which Mike describes as traumatic for the park.

“The tornadoes really changed the whole landscape,” he says.

Since then, the park has undergone – and continues to undergo – its successful recovery. Mike knows it takes symbiosis and teamwork to continue the dream.

“What’s special is not only the park’s natural resources, but also the people who truly care about each other and care about their community.” Mike’s passion presses through his words. “It takes heart to make this place what it is, and I’m surrounded by warm hearts.”

When my family and I arrive on the final Friday evening of October, there is a sliver of sunlight starting to break through

an overcast sky. Naturally, we hurry to the back deck area of the lodge that overlooks the hills and the lake. The scene is immense, and on a clear day it offers a view that spans from Sand Mountain and Gunter Mountain, to Georgia Mountain and Brindley Mountain. An exquisite and symbolic panorama of the many places and people scattered across Marshall County who other Good Life Magazine contributors, David and I have met, written about and befriended.

In the quiet, reddening dusk, I point out to my children the general direction of our farm in High Point. I point down over the treetops to the lake itself where my journey as a writer for Good Life and my own family history have their origins.

The first piece I ever wrote for the magazine was an interview with Mrs. Virginia Benson of Albertville, who has since passed away. Her stories took me deep beneath the lake’s surface, to a time and place when she, as a child, picked cotton alongside my great grandparents who sharecropped their way across the valley from farm to farm. The traces of that journey are now lost underwater, but at some point, many settled nearby where the park stands today.

Standing on the deck this evening, beholding the expanse of land and water, I am transfixed by its rich tapestry of culture and place – its rhythms, its lore, its beauty. I feel the courses of nature and history radiating. And it’s right here in our own figurative backyard.

As the sun sets, we head to the lodge restaurant where a seafood buffet awaits us. We are busy peeling shrimp when Sone Kornegay, the park’s general manager, comes over to introduce herself. Though we’ve just met, she has the presence of an old friend, all the more inviting because of her ever-so-slight Louisiana accent.

“If you need anything,” she tells me, “anything at all, you let me or one of the staff know.”

When I ask Sone how she ended up here at the park, she details her journey to Alabama and her experiences working and managing other state parks.

“But this place,” she says, “is beautiful.” She smiles, recalling the conversation with Mike Jeffreys that led her here. “When I walked in and saw all of this beauty, I knew immediately I would take the job.”

Around the restaurant, there are people who’ve arrived from as far away as Pennsylvania and Illinois. A scan around the lodge parking lot reveals car tags from Florida and Tennessee and Georgia. A bass fishing tournament has brought many folks to the county. The allure that inspired Sone to take the job here continues to summon nature lovers, adventurers and vacationers from everywhere.

Bright and early on Saturday morning, my family and I join Indya Guthrie along the interpretive nature trail that runs down to Dry Falls. Indya has been in her role as the park’s naturalist for only a few months, but her knowledge and insight into the teeming world around us betrays her passion for this park and its many forms of life.

A herpetologist by trade, Indya has found her calling among the many flora and fauna the park has to offer. Along the sunlit path, she overturns logs and rocks looking

Park naturalist Indya Guthrie leads the way on a Saturday morning nature hike.

for an array of insects and non-threatening reptiles and amphibians such as the Northern Slimy salamander.

“There are rattlesnakes from time to time,” she tells my girls, “so we are always very careful. You turn the log over towards you, so anything under goes the other way.”

The path winds and descends toward Little New York, a swath of forest thick with hardwoods. Along the way Indya stops to identify various trees and shrubs. Beauty berry, little blue stem, Virginia pine and loblolly scattered among the hickory and blackjack oak.

“Farkleberry,” she says, pointing out a scraggly plant growing amid the understory. “I grew up camping here,” Indya says. “So for me, working here ties so many things back into my childhood. I have a dream job.”

We make it finally to Dry Falls and scour the woods for a spot or two where old whiskey stills from the previous century once stood steaming. I share with Indya a story I’ve referenced often in several of my magazine pieces, the story about my great grandfather who once made moonshine in these very parts. I like to believe the sunken earth, now before us, where the remnant of a barrel remains, was perhaps his old stomping ground. I imagine him in the actual moonlight, bottling the whiskey by the gallon, making a little scratch to supplement the hardships of farming.

Later that afternoon, Crystal, the girls and I hike the park trail to King’s Chapel Cemetery where members of the King, Presley and Strange families were buried around the turn of the 19th century. There are graves from the Civil War era on up until the 1940s, when the land was transferred to the state.

Over the cemetery, the canopy of white oaks breaks in a perfect circle. A mild,

The early part of the nature hike, top, went through new-growth forests, due to a controlled burn early next year. Later Saturday, the Terrells visited King’s Chapel Cemetery, where Selah did a rubbing, or a frottage, on an old Terrell headstone. Sunday some rock climbing was on the agenda before heading home.

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www.clayirrigation.com Wispy morning fog drifted through the woods early Sunday.

afternoon sun lazily bathes all things orange, including a sizable group of Terrell gravestones. This is the namesake of the Terrell hiking trail, and an enduring hallowed ground of my ancestral connections.

While I’m no genealogy expert, and while I have lost some of the chronological and familial details of the migrating Terrells of long ago, I am nonetheless moved as we stand there among the gravestones, some marked and identified, some forever anonymous.

I remember why this park is so special to me and special to countless others. Whether we are hiking, biking or boating; whether we are exploring caves, golfing or ziplining; whether we are taking a Sunday stroll through the kaleidoscopic trove of fall colors or are watching breathlessly as an eagle swims upon an updraft over the water, it is the humbling transcendence of connecting with something higher and perhaps older than yourself that makes this place what it is.

Exploring Lake Guntersville State Park is a journey through which you’ll find you are part of a collective ownership, a community of people from the next mountain over to five states away, all in search of deeper bonds with the world around them – and within themselves.

We ate well, slept well and lived well for a weekend of nearly perfect weather.

And though there is no El Capitan looming over the sculpted valleys of Lake Guntersville, we nevertheless end our time with a little rock climbing along the Trail. From the top of a boulder, we stand, enchanted, starry-eyed and a little tired. We stare off through a break in the tree line where across Ala. 227, the Cutchenmine Trail wraps a parallel course with Short Creek.

Though we’ve hiked and kayaked each of those routes before, I am making commitments in my mind to return here every chance I get. A commitment that is perpetual through my children and through future generations.

“Daddy,” they ask, reading my mind, “how often can we come here?” “Just say when.”